Gardening Thread

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Thu Apr 02, 2020 12:58 pm

I'm gonna do this free class on basic veggie gardening.

Sorry, I don't know how to make a link, as usual

https://workspace.oregonstate.edu/cours ... uPDncKWfZc

Post by **joni** » Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:02 pm

You don't have to make a link, just paste it! You did it!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Thu Apr 02, 2020 1:11 pm

I AM HACKER

kmikeym · Post by **kmikeym** » Thu Apr 02, 2020 2:06 pm

is gary online?

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat Apr 04, 2020 8:42 am

I’m turning this thread into GENERAL GARDENING THREAD! I’m not sure I’m ready for a full master gardener class but I am extremely interested in gardening right now. A few years ago our friend helped us turn our sawdust backyard into a native plant zone and now that it’s grown in a little, it’s basically its own ecosystem, full of wildflowers and lizards and butterflies and so many birds. I don’t tend it—I’m just a witness. It’s like a painting that changes every day and it brings so much richness to my life/quarantine. On the other end of the spectrum I’m trying my hand at growing food, kinda freestyle, taking what I’ve learned from observing the wilder garden and trying to respond to what I think the plants want. I’ve been reading permaculture stuff and trying to build good soil. Got some beans and cukes and radishes and greens and tomatoes going, and tons of calendula flowers sown in the mix because apparently they’re good friends to all. Anyone else turning to gardening in this time of uncertainty?

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat Apr 04, 2020 8:43 am

Also really interested in foraging right now: every day on walks I’m scooping wild mustards, mallows, peppercorns, bay leaves, nettles, etc. I read a really inspiring Twitter thread about food forests and have been thinking about food and how easily we could nurture/plant/encourage edibles in all of LA’s wild inbetweeny spaces

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Sat Apr 04, 2020 10:20 am

Truely. You can even pick up avocados off the sidewalk in LA. I used to when I worked in Pasadena. LA is Eden.
In my lil' urban apartment I am putting things in water to see if they grow back. Outta celery? Stick in in water. Outta romaine lettuce? Tubba water. What? Used up all the green onions? PUT THEM IN WATER.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Sat Apr 04, 2020 11:27 am

I only have a small patio but it's a special zone of potted things. I'm insane for flowers so that's most of what I do, but this year I hope to get a bush cucumber going and some of the devil's weed!

I have a lot of hummingbird and butterfly flowers and seeing so much life in my "garden" truly rules. Plus birdfeeders.

My perennials are waking up after winter and making the most electric baby leaves. My new seeds are sprouting, but for some reason I can't get chamomile to grow. Last year and this year, at a certain point the delicate little sprouts wither and fade and I can't figure it out. They are watered, I don't think overwatered? Why don't they like me???

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sat Apr 04, 2020 11:52 am

I have set a single gardening goal (aside from growing herbs in porch pots which is easy): grow all the cukes and all the dill I need to can 5-6 pints of pickles.

Gary has taken charge of the yard in recent years and has all kinds of permaculture plans and is always out there digging and moving things around. But I request he make me one raised bed in which I will try to meet my goal. Will report back!

Claire your backyard makes me hugely jealous, how great!!!

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Mon Apr 06, 2020 2:44 pm

This is one of my favorite stories on this board. I hope that all my friends have a wonderful time playing in the dirt.

I have a long-term goal of introducing regionally-appropriate plant systems into my living spaces, but since I only have so much vitality in any given day, I'm mainly focusing on learning concepts and planning. My region was a meadows, deciduous, wetlands-adjacent biome before my ancestors sabotaged the land management systems of Potawatomie, Peoria, Miami, and Fox. Everyone seems to be engaging in these healing, terraforming projects.

My goal this year is to keep portions of the lawn unmowed and observe what likes to grow there, and to have some potted geraniums and pansies for my chromatherapy.

Abe · Post by **Abe** » Mon Apr 06, 2020 3:13 pm

I've got flowers, basil, and tomatoes getting bigger in pots before they go in the ground. I'm going to give some to neighbors as well. I've got starts going for cukes, zuccini, cilantro, squash, zuccinni, melons, and more flowers. My roses, tulips, and a begonia are going pretty good right now.
We've left notes to neighboring apartment dwellers in Jolene's first cousin down the street http://guerrilladev.co/jolenes-first-cousin/ to use our backyard yard (with notice), so I should mow the grass, but I haven't yet, and I tend to mulch anyway.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:36 pm

I went to check on my food garden this afternoon and found a surprise patch of mystery mushrooms growing in my peppers!! They were definitely not there yesterday and have proliferated in such violent abundance that I am once again awed by the fungal kingdom's many mysteries. It's been raining a lot in Los Angeles and it's definitely unlocking the mycelium...

: dither_it_IMG_4839.png (159.38 KiB) Viewed 30089 times

This is the loamiest, Earthiest, body-horror thing to happen to me since living in a ground-level studio apartment in Portland that was regularly infested by slugs.

Anyway I've jotted off an email to my local mycological society—they ID shrooms as a volunteer service! I'll keep you all posted.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sat Apr 11, 2020 9:27 am

WOW
Jeff VanderMeer vibes

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Sat Apr 11, 2020 9:39 am

Cool pixelated shroom pic. Looks like it came out of the game, Myst.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Sat Apr 11, 2020 10:52 am

VanderMeer has a pretty fun twitter account, mostly dedicated to things that are happening in his "yard" which is actually like a little native forest.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sat Apr 11, 2020 4:43 pm

I love VanderMeer's twitter account! He's so right on about rewilding. I think anyone who owns a patch of land (as much as anyone can "own" land) has a moral imperative to restore habitat. I'm always stunned at how aggressively nature comes back as soon as you give it an opening.

UPDATE from a man named Steven with the Los Angeles Mycological Society: my mushroom is an "inky cap," or Coprinellus flocculosus. Edibility UNKNOWN.

http://mykoweb.com/CAF/species/Coprinel ... losus.html

Pretty sick

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sun Apr 12, 2020 4:17 am

unknown?????

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sun Apr 12, 2020 11:15 am

I guess nobody’s ever tried it. Should I???

infopetal · Post by **infopetal** » Sun Apr 12, 2020 12:39 pm

yourfriendclaire wrote: ↑Fri Apr 10, 2020 4:36 pm This is the loamiest, Earthiest, body-horror thing to happen to me since living in a ground-level studio apartment in Portland that was regularly infested by slugs.

Perhaps off-topic but just want to share my solidarity as someone who also once lived somewhere infested by slugs (a carpeted ground floor bedroom in a London terrace house). Waking up to find slug trails all over your belongings feels so violating…

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Sun Apr 12, 2020 1:27 pm

god that is horrible. Slug house.

Yes Claire, eat them and report back! Eat like a pound or so.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Sun Apr 12, 2020 1:51 pm

The slugs were so gross AND a huge mystery; I'd just wake up and find slugs in the cat food every morning. No windows open or cracks in the floorboards, just slugs materializing en masse from the aether. Some places are just...damp

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:40 am

We had a giant slug that visited by night. Hypatia saw it in the kitchen sink when she want for a glass of water in the night. She stroked its back sleepily and went back to sleep. She named it Twit.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:12 am

Our last Portland house, which some of you will remember, was a tiny falling-down sort of a hut that probably shouldn't legally have been rentable, but we rented it from a pair of kooky but nice middle aged sisters who did zero upkeep and charged us 1990 rent which I consider a fair deal more or less (it was $600 a month. In the year 2012! In a nice, close-in neighborhood in Portland Oregon! A whole house, with a yard! In some ways it WAS too good to be true but in other ways it was great). It was SO wet. We didn't have slugs but we had mold, everywhere. My books molded! We'd go to sleep at night in damp sheets and when we woke up they'd be even damper. One night I started crying and Gary promised we would fix it so the next day we painted the wettest room in the house with moisture-resistant paint and borrowed a dehumidifier and it helped a little. But we are pretty sure the mold poisoned our family in some profound VanderMeer way. Specifically our dog had a lot of health problems in that house, crazy bouts of barfing 20 times in a row and licking the floor obsessively, and one day we woke up and he couldn't walk. He'd just lie there crying in pain, and periodically he'd cry louder and we'd have to carry him outside and set him down in the yard, in the ceaseless rain, so he could have terrible diarrhea. We kept having to rush him to Dove Lewis but we didn't have a car at that time, so we'd have to call Uncle Boats to drive us, or one time we did it in a Car2Go with me holding our poor shaking giant dog on my lap. The vet charged us millions of dollars to do increasingly arcane tests on him and none of them showed a single thing out of order. Nothing was identifiably wrong with him. They tried two different antibiotics that did nothing. Finally they gave him steroids and he was instantly cured. A few months later we moved away into a normal dry house and he has never had any of those problems again.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 5:18 am

Ok, yeah. Ignore my Twit story. This nearly made me weep.

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:26 am

Luckily he is fine now and full of beans!

Am I gross for finding slugs cute

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:33 am

p.s. Molly it's fun that we are the only people awake right now each day, on such different points on the planet. Morning for me and afternoon for you. How strange is this life! All our friends are still a'slumber, dreaming of gardens and bread and stills from movies.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:22 am

They better be dreaming of those things. Otherwise, I'd feel downright lonely, nine timezones away...

Phil · Post by **Phil** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:25 am

I'm up.

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 8:30 am

Welcome to the party, Phil. Ritchey and I are already elbow deep in chores around here.

Post by **joni** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:11 am

I’m up, and Claire just got up and waved at me

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:13 am

CHORE TIME

I just started my yogurt and put my beans in a pot to soak. now I am prepping for class more because I shirked it yesterday.

I love chores. What are your chores

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:22 am

I think slugs are cute, too. They have funny faces and they are so slow. Reading this thread made me recall various basements and rooms touched by their slime trails.

But it's different when animals and spores get into your private domain. For example, I despise chipmunks now because they get in the walls of our house. They are way worse than slugs.

I have a really bad attitude about the yard maintenance I should be doing. There are millions of old nut shells, fallen tree limbs, and piles of leaves from autumn. Soon my mother will ask me to mow the lawn. I'll be brave and dutiful.......

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:25 am

I’m up! Dismantle’s popping this AM, I love to see it

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:29 am

Today. Gotta get up and get the dough outta the fridge. Gotta bake the bread and roast everything I can get my paws on while the oven is at 1000 degrees and holding. Gotta toast this big ol' bag of sunflower seeds before we "waste them" by eating them all untoasted.
Ugh, don't remind me that I also need to grade 60 13-year-olds' "formal letters of complaint."
Also my 20-30 mins of yoga that I do each day. A delightful chore that I enjoy very much but will only actually get down on my knees and do if I call it a chore in my mind.

meadows · Post by **meadows** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:32 pm

I love slugs!

I hate mold, so so much. It's a deep health hazard, and what can you even fucking do? We just got a new mattress and I'm really pleased in a specific way because our old one looked like it was getting a bit of mildew on the bottom and it was freaking me the fuck out.

richjensen · Post by **richjensen** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 1:18 pm

J planted an undocumented garden in the pea patch up the block. Meanwhile, there are some neighbors that have a big plot going in their backyard. We are spying on them and getting to know them. They seem to have some extra space.. Maayybbeee..

lake · Post by **lake** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:07 pm

SLUGS! We have recently discovered carnivorous snails called Decollates (Rumina decollata) that eat slugs! They love our front yard and we have introduced them to our veggie garden where the slugs are rampant. Nevada(the child) has also put several into a jar on our kitchen window sill that she tenderly feeds slugs to daily.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:41 pm

lake wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2020 2:07 pm SLUGS! We have recently discovered carnivorous snails called Decollates (Rumina decollata) that eat slugs! They love our front yard and we have introduced them to our veggie garden where the slugs are rampant. Nevada(the child) has also put several into a jar on our kitchen window sill that she tenderly feeds slugs to daily.

A huge Dismantle Work messageboard welcome to Lake!!!!!!!!!!!

ritchey · Post by **ritchey** » Tue Apr 14, 2020 3:58 am

lake with a very good first post about CARNIVOROUS SLUGS!!! Wonderful news!

m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:02 am

I don't know Vandermeer but that sounds like some psychedelic nature weirdness to me! So the snails don't eat your veggies? They only eat slugs? That's beautiful.

RCH · Post by **RCH** » Tue Apr 14, 2020 5:27 pm

I recently learned that there are tardigrades who only eat other tardigrades. Same thing.

Abe · Post by **Abe** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 3:22 pm

This is my garden/yard. I took this yesterday.
None of the Apartment neighbors have taken us up on yard time yet. I guess parks are more convenient. More hammock for us!

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 4:03 pm

Beautiful, @abe! I love those chairs and if I lived in the apartment next door I would gladly park my buns in one.

willowowow · Post by **willowowow** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 4:04 pm

Beautiful, @abe! I love those chairs and if I lived in the apartment next door I would gladly park my buns in one.

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:48 pm

Fantastic!! So jealous of that L-shaped planter bed

alex · Post by **alex** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:00 pm

I don't have much of a garden to speak about (built a few raised beds but turns out that the soil might have lead in it, probably from paint chips from the house?). But if/when I do ever have a suitable yard again, I would like to try this "do-nothing-gardening" thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_farming). It is probably more complicated than it seems, but in my mind it just involves throwing various seeds around and not doing anything. Aspirational!

infopetal · Post by **infopetal** » Tue Apr 28, 2020 10:55 pm

I personally cannot FATHOM turning down yard time…

yourfriendclaire · Post by **yourfriendclaire** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:12 am

@alex, I would also like to try the do-nothing garden thing! I have mostly California natives growing in the non-food zone of my yard and it’s fascinating to watch them chill and balance out. Nature thrives when you let it do its own thing! I’m trying to introduce some native plants that have edible/medicinal qualities so that I lazily harvest them amidst the existing bloom.

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m o l l y · Post by **m o l l y** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:13 am

Perdy.

alex · Post by **alex** » Wed Apr 29, 2020 10:05 am

@claire Throw some seeds around! I think it would be as much a fun exercise in inaction (ignore the urge to weed) as anything else. I have a friend who has a nice garden and there is chard growing just everywhere, in the paths, etc..and at first I wanted him to make it all clean and tidy, but now I love it and there is much more chard than there would be otherwise.